This Article upends the traditional framing of the United States as a migrant-receiving country by examining a growing category of emigrant outflows: U.S. citizens who have been compelled to depart permanently because of conditions of vulnerability. Eschewing use of the generic term “expatriate,” this Article contends that these U.S. citizens are most accurately described as pressured migrants who have exited due to identity-based mistreatment, gaps in the social safety net, or concerns about deteriorating social and political conditions in the United States. By focusing on these departures, this Article aims to further theorize and provide a lexicon for a subtype of human mobility that lies at the interstices of refugee flows and lifestyle migration, somewhere between involuntary and voluntary migration.
The Article presents a typology of U.S. citizen pressured migrants and catalogs the migratory vehicles they have used to gain entrance to other countries, including programs for diasporic descendants, retirees, and investors, as well as conventional immigration pathways. This Article also explores the prominent role that private immigration brokers play in facilitating exit from the United States. It concludes by examining the broader significance of these departures for scholarly debates about U.S. citizenship, the relationship between overseas citizens and the state, the influence of privilege and coloniality in migratory moves, and the creeping clout of the “exit industry.”
About the Author
Jayesh Rathod, Professor of Law and Director, Immigrant Justice Clinic, American University Washington College of Law.
Thanks to Bernadette Atuahene, Matthew Boaz, Anna Cabot, Michael Dowley, Eric Fish, Eric Hershberg, Jerome Hughes, Praveen Kosuri, Sarah Paoletti, Michele Pistone, Anita Sinha, Jane Spinak, and Caroline Wick for helpful conversations or comments on earlier versions of this Article. Feedback received at the Stephen Ellmann Clinical Theory Workshop at New York University School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Carey School of Law Faculty Speaker Series, and the Law & Society 2023 Annual Meeting was extremely useful. Adam Domitz, Brandon Samples, Xara Sunne, Parker Taft, and Brendan McDonnell provided invaluable research assistance.
Citation
98 Tul. L. Rev. 805